Come in here.
She shuffled back and they entered the apartment. The room was too hot. The heat was suffocating and the room crowded with all manner of things. Cardboard boxes. Papers. Piles of clothes. Yellowed stacks of newspaper. Flower pots. An oscillating fan. A box fan. A hat rack. A collection of Sears catalogs. An ironing board opened against one wall with a row of loaded grocery sacks spread across it. In the middle of the room was a television set built into a wood cabinet with another smaller portable television positioned atop the first like a head. Across from the television was a stuffed chair with hand towels laid over the worn arms, and off to the side a faded davenport shoved against the window.
Don’t touch anything, she said. Sit over there.
They sat down together on the davenport and watched her limp with two metal canes across the room. There was a pathway between the boxes and the leaning stacks of paper and she followed that to the stuffed chair, then lowered herself painfully and stood the two silver canes between her knees.
She was an old woman in a thin flowered housedress with a long apron covering it. She was humpbacked and required a hearing aid, and her hair was yellow and pulled back into a knot, and her bare arms were spotted and freckled and the skin hung in folds above the elbows. On the back of one of her hands was a jagged purple bruise like a birthmark. When she was seated she took up a cigarette that was already lit and sucked on it and expelled smoke toward the ceiling in a gray stream. She was watching the two boys from behind her glasses. Her mouth was vivid red.
Well, she said. I’m waiting.
They looked at her.
Start talking, she said.
It’s two dollars and fifty cents, Mrs. Stearns, Ike said. For the paper.
That’s not talk. That’s only business. What’s the matter with you? What’s the weather like?
They turned and looked through the gauzy curtain draped over the window behind them; the curtain smelled heavy of dust. The view was of the back alley. It’s sunny, Bobby said.
The wind isn’t blowing today, Ike said.
But the leaves are falling.
That’s not weather, Ike said.
Bobby turned his head to look at his brother. It has something to do with it.
It isn’t it, though.
Never mind, Mrs. Stearns said. She stetched a wrinkled arm along the wide armrest of the chair and tapped her cigarette. What are you doing at school? You go to school, don’t you?
Yes.
Well.
They were silent.
You, she said. The oldest one. What’s your name?
Ike.
What grade are you in?
Fifth.
Who’s your teacher in school?
Miss Keene.
A big tall woman? With a long jaw?
I guess so, Ike said.
Is she a good teacher?
She lets us do seatwork at our own speed. She lets us do work at the board and do writing. Then she copies it and sends it to the other grades in school to look at.
So she is a good teacher, Mrs. Stearns said.
But she told a girl to shut up one time.
Did she? What for?
She didn’t want to sit next to somebody.
Who didn’t she want to sit next to?
Richard Peterson. She didn’t like the way he was smelling.
Well, yes, Mrs. Stearns said. His people have a dairy. Don’t they.
He smells like their cow parlor.
So would you if you lived on a dairy and you had to work on it, Mrs. Stearns said.
We have horses, Ike said.
Iva Stearns studied him for a moment. She appeared to be considering this remark. Then she drew on her cigarette and put it out. She turned to Bobby. What about you? she said. Who’s your teacher?
Miss Carpenter, Bobby said.
Who?
Miss Carpenter.
I don’t know her.
She’s got long hair and . . .
And what? Mrs. Stearns said.
She always wears sweaters.
Does she.
Mostly, he said.
What do you know about sweaters?